Friday, November 21, 2014

Hindus make
bold to be the inheritors of a great and exceptional civilization. And they
are.

Indeed, a
wider recognition of this ancestral greatness would solve a number of
contemporary problems Hinduism faces. Separatism, the phenomenon that Hindu
sects declare that they are non-Hindu and back-project that they never have
been Hindus, is largely due to the bad reputation of Hinduism. Nobody wants to
stay on a sinking ship (especially not the rats, the true nature of most defectors).
Hinduism is slandered as “caste, wholly caste and nothing but caste”, and when
at all it is admitted to be something else on top, it must be widow
self-immolation, child marriage, dowry murders, nowadays the rapes that make
headlines, and other human rights violations. Moreover, it is seen as
superstitious, incoherent, flaky, and worst of all, weak. Hinduism has an
intensely bad image, and that is why the Jains, Buddhists, Lingayats, Sikhs,
Arya Samajis, Ramakrishna Mission and others insist that they are not Hindus,
while another category of malcontents defect by converting to Christianity or
Islam.

Yet, Hindu
civilization has everything to make its scions proud. If this greatness were
highlighted rather than its real and imagined shortcomings, the defecting sects
would eagerly come back. Those Sikhs who militated for Khalistan only
yesterday, will turn around and shout: “Sikhs are Hindus”, or rather: “We Sikhs
are more Hindu than you!”

Consider
for instance the Vedic seers. Mind you, historically, “Hindu” is every Indian
Pagan, i.e. every non-Christian and non-Muslim Indian. This implies that it
includes many more people and more traditions than the strictly Vedic lineage,
to which a certain hostile discourse tries to narrow “Hinduism” down. But even this
much-maligned Vedic lineage has given the world enough to make all Hindus
proud.

First of
all, we have their praiseworthy choice of what things not to do. The Vedic seers
did not invent fairy-tales about their tradition being eternal and God-given. Whereas
the Quran and the Biblical Ten Commandments are in the form of God addressing
man, the Vedic hymns are more truthfully in the form of men addressing the
gods. I am aware that some Hindus try to understand the Vedas as a kind of
Quran, eternal and revealed. They like to crawl under the heavy weight of
scriptures ascribed to a divine author, showing the lack of self-understanding
common in this age of degeneracy of Hinduism. Fortunately, the Vedic seers knew
better: they walked upright and composed those scriptures themselves. The Vedas
were not created by a superhuman source and then memorized by dumb and
uncreative human beings; they were created by skilful and understanding human
beings, the ancestors of contemporary Hindu civilization.

And then there
are the things they did do. First of all, they created great poetry using
elaborate metaphors, crafty verse forms and a unique system of memorization.
Hindu society set apart a class whose job it was to memorize and pass on the
tradition, genealogies and literature. Vedic recitations today are deemed, even
by hostile Indologists, as undeniably a kind of tape-recording of the original
recitation thousands of years ago. It is this class of reciters that nowadays
comes in for the harshest criticism. All the separatist sects invariably flaunt
an anti-Brahmin hate discourse. They thereby prove they don’t value the
transmission of knowledge. In their rants that “the Brahmins monopolized
knowledge”, they seem not to care about the “knowledge” part, nor do they busy
themselves with acquiring or transmitting this knowledge. To be sure, inertia and the psychological
effect of being honoured by society caused some pride and smugness among the less
meritorious members of the Brahmin class, a human phenomenon known in societies
the world over. But the merits of this class, and especially of the society
that set it apart, are unique.

Next,
consider the insights captured in the literature they transmitted. Many great
ideas that were to come in full bloom in later philosophies of India, East
Asia, and more recently the West, already existed in germ in the Vedic hymns
thousands of years ago. Thus, the correspondence between microcosmos and
macrocosmos, between man and universe; the identity of man with the
intelligence of the sun (so’ham); or
the vibratory nature of reality (aum),
still central also in Buddhism (om namo
amituo fu, om mani padme hum) and
in Sikhism (omkar), are already
themes in Vedic poetry. Such elementary concepts as the division of the year in
12 and 360, and such profundities as the monistic unity underlying the
plurality of gods, or the distinction between the ordinary self acting and the real
Self merely observing, are all present in a single Vedic hymn – ideas to which entire
schools of philosophy are mere commentaries. Later, the doctrine of the Self
was explicitated by seers like Yajnavalkya, who is up there with Plato as an
ideas man next to whom a whole philosophical tradition is but a series of
footnotes. Even the Buddhist no-Self doctrine, which spread around Asia, can
only be comprehended by presupposing the concept of the Self.

The seers’
pluralistic outlook is not equally exceptional, at least not when compared with
Chinese or ancient Greek worldviews,-- but nowadays the majority of mankind is
in thrall to two religions (the Religion of Love and the Religion of Peace)
that believe in suppressing pluralism and claiming the sole truth for
themselves. Against their narrow-minded exclusivism, the Hindu tradition offers
the solution. Inside and outside the Vedas, almost everywhere in India, we find
a religiosity that makes no truth claims about God. The devotional rituals
practised in all temples, before sacred trees or in sacred groves, simply
express awe for the sacred, the most fundamental and universal layer of all
religions.

Secularists
advocate superficiality and philosophical illiteracy, which is now having its
effects on India’s population. A rediscovery of the real treasures of Hindu
tradition will gladden the hearts of all those who can call themselves its
inheritors. Say with pride: we are Hindus!

(published in Prabodhan, the book edited by Prof. Saradindu Mukherji and made public at the World Hindu Congress, Delhi, 21-23 November 2014)

(its introduction also contains this paragraph summarizing my views:)

The borders of "Hinduism"

The Hindu territory has constantly been shrinking for more than a thousand years: Kabul, most of Southeast Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, de facto also Kashmir and parts of the Northeast, these have all been lost. But the conceptual domainof "Hindu" has also been shrinking. Originally, Muslim invaders introduced the term as meaning: all Indian Pagans (non-Abrahamics), whether Buddhists, Jains,tribals, low-castes, high-castes, and by implication also younger sects like Virashaivism, Sikhism, the Arya Samaj or the Ramakrishna Mission. The insistence by many castes that they are "not Hindus" stems from two circumstances: the very negative reputation of Hinduism, contrasting with its fair name in de 19th century; and the fogginess around the definition of "Hinduism", only aggravated in recent decades by a deliberate manipulation of the word's meaning. After sketching some details of this phenomenon, we proceed to show that a correct assessment of the basic texts and the history of Hinduism would largely remedy both the bad name of Hinduism and the shifting sands of the term's meaning. It may sometimes be diplomatically wise to speak of "Buddhists and Hindus" or "Hindus and Sikhs", but the scholarly fact to be clearly realized and kept in mind is that the sect founders Shakyamuni Buddha and Guru Nanak never meant to break away from Hinduism, anymore than Shankara did when he founded his Dashanami monastic order, Hindu par excellence.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

According to
retired history professor Romila Thapar, “academics must question more” (The Hindu, October 27, 2014). She was
delivering the third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture, eloquently titled: “To
Question or not to Question: That is the Question”. The problem addressed by
her was that “academics and experts shied away from questioning the powers of
the day”. So, she “urge[d]
intellectuals to resist assault on liberal thought”. In particular, she “asked
a full house of Delhi’s intelligentsia on Sunday why changes in syllabi and
objections to books were not being challenged”.

She was,
hopefully, misinformed. (I shudder to think of the alternative explanation for
this obvious untruth.) The recent changes in syllabi and objections to books by
pro-Hindu activists, both phenomena being summed up in the single name of Dina
Nath Batra, have met with plenty of vocal objections and petitions in protest,
signed by leading scholars in India and abroad. I myself have signed two such
petitions. At the European Indology conference in Zürich, July 2014, we were
all given a petition to sign in support of Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: an Alternative History,
which Batra’s judicial challenge had forced the publishers to withdraw. The
general opinion among educated people, widely expressed, was to condemn all
attempts at book-banning.

Selective indignation

To be sure, the
intellectuals’ indignation was selective. There have indeed been cases where
they have failed to come out in defence of besieged authors. No such storms of
protest are raised when Muslims or Christians have books banned, or even when
they assault the writers. Thus, several such assaults happened on the author
and publisher of the Danish Mohammed cartoons, yet at its annual conference,
the prestigious and agenda-setting American Academy of Religion hosted a panel
where every single participant, including the speakers from the audience,
supported the Muslim objections to the cartoons.

This trahison des clercs (“betrayal by the
intellectuals”) is aptly explained by Thapar herself: “There are more academics
in existence than ever before but most prefer not to confront authority even if
it debars the path of free thinking. Is this because they wish to pursue
knowledge undisturbed or because they are ready to discard knowledge, should
authority require them to do so?”

The point is
that the intellectual’s selective indignation shows very well where real
authority lies. Threats of violence are, of course, highly respected. The day
Hindus start assaulting writers they don’t like, you will see eminent historians
like herself turning silent about Hindu censorship, or even taking up its
defence -- for that is what actually happens in the case of Islamic threats. Even
more pervasive is the effect of threats to their careers. You will be in
trouble if you utter any “Islamophobic” criticism of Islamic censorship, but
you will earn praise if you challenge even proper judicial action against any
anti-Hindu publications. This, then, safely predicts the differential behaviour
of most intellectuals vis-à-vis free speech.

Box-type religions

A wholly
different point is that she shows her partisan affiliation by adopting a
secularized Christian framework when talking about Indian schools of thought.
According to the newspaper report, “tracing the lineage of the modern public
intellectual to Shramanic philosophers of ancient India, Prof. Thapar said the
non-Brahminical thinkers of ancient India were branded as Nastikas or
non-believers”. The division in Astika and Nastika already had different
meanings at the time (not even exhausted by the two main ones: Vedic vs.
non-Vedic, theistic vs. non-theistic), and did not coincide with the division
in Brahmana vs. Shramana. Ancient Indian thought was never divided in box-type
orthodoxies on the pattern of Christians vs. Muslims or Catholics vs.
Protestants. It is only a Western projection, borrowed as somehow more
prestigious by the Indian “secularists”, that imposes this categorization on
the Indian landscape of ideas. Buddhist thinkers were never treated as
dissenters, and even less so when Buddhism was politically in the ascendant.

She added an
interesting image: “I am reminded of the present day where if you don’t accept
what Hindutva teaches, you’re all branded together as Marxists.” The
heavy-handed Marxist predominance in Indian academe is a historical fact of
which she herself is a product as well as an icon, but now the notion is a bit
dated. Today, many opportunists have shifted their loyalty to more fashionable
new trends dictated by American universities, such as postmodernism,
postcolonialism, multiculturalism, feminism and the more native contribution of
subalternism. It is true that many Hindutva votaries are not up-to-date with
the latest academic fashions, frozen as these outsiders are in old slogans. At
any rate, the vibrant interaction of ancient India’s intellectual landscape,
where free debate flourished, was nothing like the modern situation where her
own school has locked out the Hindu voice and the latter has reactively demonized
her.

Power equation

In her view, “public
intellectuals, playing a discernible role, are needed for such explorations as
also to articulate the traditions of rational thought in our intellectual
heritage. This is currently being systematically eroded.” True, many
intellectuals are not guided by what is true or “rational”, but only by what
company they land up in if they get associated with a particular viewpoint.
Numerous persons in academe and the media have loudly sung the anti-Hindu or
“secular” tune when that was fashionable. Depending on how close their
institutional position is to the new Narendra Modi government, you
interestingly see many of them reposition themselves as somehow always having
been pro-Hindu.

As she aptly
said: “It is not that we are bereft of people who can think autonomously and
ask relevant questions. But frequently where there should be voices, there is
silence. Are we all being co-opted too easily by the comforts of conforming?”

But the power
equation is such that the comforts of conforming still lead most to the
anti-Hindu side. The opportunists changing sides are still a minority, the
anti-Hindu discourse remains the dominant one. The best proof is that the
ruling BJP, supposedly a Hindu party, is still acting out the worldview of the
“secularists”. They are not actively challenging it or changing the
intellectual power equation. It is perhaps fortunate for the Hindu side that
the “secularists” have denounced it for so long as a Hindu party, for that is
what makes the opportunists turn superficially pro-Hindu now.

So far, the
ruling party is not repeating Murli Manohar Joshi’s attempt (ca. 2002) to
rewrite the officially recommended history textbooks. That adventure ended in a
demonstration of Hindu incompetence, a complete reversal once the “secularists”
were back in power, and a strong reaffirmation of their intellectual
predominance. Even though the BJP is back in power now, it still hesitates to
challenge their conceptual framework.

Moral authority

According to
the newspaper: “Prof. Thapar stressed that intellectuals were especially needed
to speak out against the denial of civil rights and the events of genocide.”
Yes, the genocide accompanying the birth of Pakistan and later of Bangladesh
are two events that should not be forgotten, eventhough her own school has
tried to whitewash, minimize or obscure them. The largest religious massacre of
independent India’s history, that of the Sikhs by the Congress “secularists” in
1984, also comes in for closer scrutiny and for a demythologizing analysis
about the true nature of Congress dynasticism. On a smaller scale, Hindus have
also misbehaved, either out of smugness or out of desperation, and that too
deserves study; except that it has already been made the object of publications
so many times while the former subjects remain orphans.

The eminent
historian is quoted as observing: “The combination of drawing upon wide
professional respect, together with concern for society can sometimes establish
the moral authority of a person and ensure public support.” Indeed, the
impartisan nature of proper academic research would confer the moral authority
to intervene, sparingly, in ongoing public debates. It is therefore a pity that
so many scholars of her own school have squandered this moral authority by
being so brazenly partisan.

No reaction?

Finally, she reiterated her main point, namely “the ease with which books are
banned and pulped or demands made that they be burned and syllabi changed under
religious and political pressure or the intervention of the state. Why do such
actions provoke so little reaction from academics, professionals and others
among us who are interested in the outcome of these actions? The obvious answer
is the fear of the instigators — who are persons with the backing of political
authority.”

Again, Prof.
Thapar was misinformed. When Batra and other Hindus put publishers under
pressure to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s book or AK Ramanujan’s Three Hundred Ramayanas, the publishers
buckled under the fear of the Hindu public’s purchasing power. Apart from
ideological factors, entrepreneurs also have to take into account the purely
commercial aspect of a controversy. In this case, they took into account the only
power that Hindus have: their numbers. But the Hindu instigators did not
inspire “fear”, and definitely did not have “the backing of political
authority”.

It is strange
how fast people can forget. Modi has only very recently come to power. At the
time of the Ramanujan and Doniger controversies, Congress was safely in power.
If the publishers were in awe of any powers-that-be, it was of the Congress
“secularists”.

More
fundamentally, changes in government do not necessarily entail changes in the
dominant intellectual framework. The accession to power (or rather, to office)
of a nominally Hindu party does not mean that the ideological power equation
has changed. In spite of the lip-service paid to Hindu self-respect by a few
fashion-conscious opportunists, anti-Hindu “secularism” still rules the roost.
Even now it furnishes the set of assumptions that most intellectuals, and even
most ruling BJP politicians, go by.

About Me

Koenraad Elst (°Leuven 1959) distinguished himself early on as eager to learn and to dissent. After a few hippie years he studied at the KU Leuven, obtaining MA degrees in Sinology, Indology and Philosophy. After a research stay at Benares Hindu University he did original fieldwork for a doctorate on Hindu nationalism, which he obtained magna cum laude in 1998.
As an independent researcher he earned laurels and ostracism with his findings on hot items like Islam, multiculturalism and the secular state, the roots of Indo-European, the Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute and Mahatma Gandhi's legacy. He also published on the interface of religion and politics, correlative cosmologies, the dark side of Buddhism, the reinvention of Hinduism, technical points of Indian and Chinese philosophies, various language policy issues, Maoism, the renewed relevance of Confucius in conservatism, the increasing Asian stamp on integrating world civilization, direct democracy, the defence of threatened freedoms, and the Belgian question. Regarding religion, he combines human sympathy with substantive skepticism.